The Life of Thomas More, by Peter Ackroyd, Chatto & Windus 435pp, £20 in UK
Erasmus and Thomas More, both theological and philosophical liberals who were yet prepared to accept the ultimate authority of the Catholic Church, lived through difficult times for liberals; what the era of the Reformation demanded was men of extreme and even fanatical views and those who seemed to sit on the fence were despised by both sides. One of the many merits of Peter Ackroyd's new biography is the space he gives to an examination of the friendship of these two great Renaissance humanists. Erasmus, more learned, was a timid man who wished More had left theological questions to the theologians. More, far the more impressive of the two as a human being, preferred to live one day as a tiger than a lifetime as a lamb.
Erasmus was genuinely appalled by the extremism of Martin Luther, but Ackroyd suggests More's sensibility was not wholly unlike Luther's with whom he clashed violently - perhaps because those we hate most are those we most resemble. Both were ascetics, both people to whom scatological imagery came naturally, both, looked at from a certain point of view, fanatics. It could even be argued that both men placed an excessive emphasis on order and the peril from a "demonic" world of chaos; it is significant that the so-called rebel Luther supported the bloody suppression of the Peasants Revolt in Germany.
As for fanaticism, Ackroyd absolves More from the calumnies in Foxe's Book of Martyrs to the effect that when Lord Chancellor he tortured and whipped heretics, but concedes that many an extreme Protestant faced the fires of Smithfield when More was Lord Chancellor.
It is the contradictions in human personalities that most fascinate, but in More they took an extreme form. He never really resolved the contradiction between the life of scholarship and letters - his Utopia is an enduring classic - and the life of the everyday world which he was immersed in as a lawyer; the contradiction is most fittingly summed up by the hair shirt he wore under his sumptuous Lord Chancellor's gown. Erasmus thought More's career as a lawyer was a waste of a fine mind, but it was precisely the human insights More derived from his life in the quotidian world that gave him a moral depth Erasmus lacked.
One can detect the same ambiguities and ambivalences in two areas which the 20th century makes the touchstone of moral excellence: his attitude to women, and to animals. Whether More was in any real sense a misogynist is doubtful, despite his less than flattering references to wives and marriage. He married his second wife, Alice, when he was 33 and she 41, and had much to put up with from this notorious termagant and harpy; sometimes it seemed that the shrewish Alice's only real interest in life was how to find ways to contradict her distinguished husband. Whatever his reservations about Alice, More deeply revered his brilliant eldest daughter Margaret, who justifiably had the reputation of being the cleverest woman in England.
As for animals, More's liking for and fascination with them - he kept his own menagerie and in Utopia launches a dithyrambic attack on hunting - would doubtless be offset for a modern mind by the consideration that he kept a pet monkey on a chain.
There are many fine things in this book, particularly concerning London lore and early language, but two flaws may be mentioned. Perhaps we have become saturated with memories of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, but in Ackroyd's account the high drama of More's trial and his conflict with Henry VIII fails to catch fire; in particular, we get no real sense of what an egregiously disgusting monster Henry VIII was.
More seriously, Ackroyd has elected to reproduce all direct speech in the quaint orthography of the early 15th century. At best this is an irritant in "ye olde gadzooks varlet" mode, but at worst it seriously impedes readability and narrative flow.
But perhaps one should not cavil. Sir Thomas More has always attracted extreme and contrary emotions: Catholics tend to emphasise his role as saint and martyr, Protestants his alleged fanaticism and heresy-hunting. The strength of Peter Ackroyd's biography is its detached and judicious quality. He can see why More was (and is) disliked but his admiration for his courage and heroism finally wins the day.
Frank McLynn is a biographer and critic